YouTube Widget

Subscriber count, total views and video count for one or more YouTube channels, optionally with each channel's most recent uploads and their view, like and comment counts.

Requirements

A YouTube Data API v3 key.

Getting an API key

1. Go to console.cloud.google.com
2. Create a project (or select an existing one)
3. Enable the YouTube Data API v3
4. Go to Credentials → Create Credentials → API Key
5. Copy the key (optionally restrict it to the YouTube Data API)

The key is stored encrypted and is never sent back to the browser — see Security. Once saved, the field shows as saved rather than displaying the key.

Configuration

Key	Type	Default	Description
apiKey	string	—	YouTube Data API v3 key
channels	{ id: string }[]	[]	Channels to show, up to 3
showRecentVideos	boolean	false	Show each channel's latest uploads
recentVideoCount	number	3	How many uploads per channel (1–10)
videoRefreshMinutes	number	60	How often video stats are refetched (minimum 10)
refreshInterval	number	300000	Widget poll interval in ms, for channel totals

Latest videos

With Show latest videos enabled, each channel lists its most recent uploads with:

• Thumbnail, title and how long ago it was published
• Duration, or a LIVE badge for an in-progress stream
• View count, like count, comment count

Likes and comments are omitted for videos where the creator has hidden likes or turned comments off. That is deliberate — the API returns no figure at all in those cases, and showing 0 would be inventing one.

Quota

The free allowance is 10,000 units a day. Every list call costs 1 unit no matter how many channels or fields it asks for, so what matters is the number of calls:

What	Calls	When
Channel totals	1 (all channels batched)	Every refreshInterval
Latest videos	1 per channel, plus 1 shared	Every videoRefreshMinutes

Video stats are cached on the server, so videoRefreshMinutes — not the widget's own refresh rate, and not how many browser tabs you have open — is what governs API usage.

A typical setup of three channels, five-minute widget refresh and hourly video refresh costs about 384 units a day, under 4% of the allowance:

channel totals   288 refreshes × 1 unit  = 288
latest videos     24 refreshes × 4 units =  96

Why not search.list?

Finding a channel's recent uploads via search.list is the obvious approach and costs 100 units per call — hourly that is 2,400 units a day, and at the widget's normal refresh rate it would exhaust the quota before lunch. This widget reads the channel's uploads playlist instead, which gives the same answer for 1 unit.

Finding a channel ID

A channel ID looks like UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. To find it:

• Go to the channel page on YouTube
• The ID is in the URL: youtube.com/channel/UC...
• For custom URLs (youtube.com/@handle), view the page source and search for channelId, or use a lookup tool

Notes

Subscriber counts are rounded. Above 1,000 subscribers YouTube reports only three significant figures, so a channel on 123,456 shows as 123,000 and will not appear to change until it crosses 124,000. Below 1,000 the figure is exact. This is an API limitation, not a display choice.

Hidden subscriber counts read as 0; the widget knows the difference and does not treat it as a real figure.

Example config

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_KEY_HERE",
  "channels": [
    { "id": "UCVls1GmFKf6WlTraIb_IaJg" },
    { "id": "UC9-y-6csu5WGm29I7JiwpnA" }
  ],
  "showRecentVideos": true,
  "recentVideoCount": 3,
  "videoRefreshMinutes": 60
}